Oliver Twist (Annotated, Special 200th Birthday Issue)

Annotated with:

*Guide to Dickens 2012, an international celebration of the author's life and work marking the bicentenary of his birth.
*Biographical preface.
*Critical introduction.

"Oliver Twist," Charles Dickens’ second novel, clearly harkens to the author's own miserable childhood experiences, with its young protagonist ensnared in the evils of a workhouse. The book’s minute focus on an orphan’s progress through a harrowing system--from “baby farm” to the mean streets of London--brought international attention to the plight of England’s poor, but Dickens lightens the story's grim realism with episodes of kindness that shine like gems in a gutter. Oliver's tale, and his personality, have been reduced by posterity to one episode, and one immortal line. In the poorhouse, where the children receive only “three meals of thin gruel a day, with an onion twice a week, and half a roll on Sundays," Oliver, made bold by hunger, approaches the fat, wicked master with his empty bowl in his hand and summons the nerve to say, “Please, sir, I want some more.”